Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution.

Since SIPA and Columbia University are global institutions of learning, I thought many of you would be interested in attending this week’s symposium about the International Fellows Program (IFP), on Friday, April 17, 2015 at the International Affairs Building, Room 1501. The IFP Symposium will feature a keynote address by Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution and former Deputy Secretary of State, on Russia, Europe, and the U.S., with a focus on the Ukraine crisis and beyond. Following the keynote, he will be joined for a panel discussion by Maxim Boycko, visiting scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research; Kim Marten, associate professor of political science at Barnard College; Constanze Stelzenmueller, senior fellow at Brookings; and Stephen Sestanovich, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor for the Practice of International Diplomacy and director of the International Fellows Program.

You may RSVP for the event here.

If you’re asking yourself, what is IFP?, well, it’s pretty simple (and exciting). The International Fellows Program is a two-semester multidisciplinary seminar open to 30 students of all graduate degree programs at Columbia University. All fellows receive a stipend and study a curriculum with two goals – to examine the origins of the current international order, in which the United States has for decades played the leading role, and to look ahead to the new world that will eventually take its place, dominated by a larger number of actors, new problems, and approaches to problem solving that have yet to be defined. Participation in the International Fellows Program provides unique programming and networking opportunities with prominent figures of the international community. (Learn more about IFP in this 4-minute video.)

FYI, if you didn’t get into the IFP this year, it’s OK. You may still reapply for the program in your second year!

For questions about the program, please contact Director Stephen Sestanovich at [email protected].